2005 going to 2006: new year's eve

Boy, no one would believe how stressed I woke up this morning. Today is the last day of 2005 that I and millions of people all over the planet would ever see. Somehow new year's eve has always stressed me out and this has been the case for the past few years. I haven't exactly been able to determine why yet but hopefully someday I will. I mean think about it, I go to bed and all of the sudden the next day it's a whole brand new YEAR!! Gosh, this is scary.

Scary because things as fundamental as time are changing (2000 and 2001, 2001 and 2002, 2005 and then 2006), scary because I feel like am getting older and haven't accomplished as much as I thought I would have or scary just because this time of the year, for the past 6 years I've always been alone somewhere in a foreign country and not with my family around? I don't know and am not too sure. However leaving alone is a choice that I have made for myself and that's probably not a stress factor since I have gotten used to it by know (or so I think).

Anyways, let's quickly review 2005. What have I done this year or accomplished at all?

- The big thing that I think I have done for myself this year is this Blog. I don't remember exactly why I started one, was it the hype about it or the fact that I could find a place where I could say things and talk to other people all over the world without being restricted in my opinion and with the positive thought that someone else would read it and think: "oh my Gosh, this guy totally understands how I feel about this or that".

- The other thing was that 2004 to 2005 has been a year for many changes in my life, some of them really good, some of them bad but I wouldn't complain because I believe and have seen many people around that have gone through more dramatic changes that probably have impacted their lives forever.

- In 2005, many things happened in terms of technology. Things have changed from Companies publishing most of the stuff on the Web and pushing it towards the Internet populace to letting people actually publish on the Web and make it more interesting because most of what is read are opinions on a one person to another basis without the filtering wall of big corporations in between. Community website has had a whole new meaning. I remember the first community website I have ever gotten interested into (www.ryze.com) and the ones I am currently using with totally different concepts of user participation and of course the new concepts have literally sucked up crowds of surfers. Some good examples are www.flickr.com, www.last.fm, del.icio.us just to list the most popular ones. Then the other interesting thing is how AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript XML) has "resurfaced" and I am using resurfaced beacause XMLHttpRequest is an old thing. Except that from what I believe, no one has really found a good use to it except until now. The other great thing that I've seen this year is the rise of Web 2.0 (www.meebo.com, www.writely.com, etc...). The concept of Web 2.0 as I believe is to bring some more interactivity to the web using tools like Macromedia Flash (now Adobe... what?), Javascript, XML, Web Services and so on. However, calling these changes that have started showing up on the Web Web 2.0 as if it was a new version is quite misleading and of course we will see in the new future many corporations and small to medium size businesses jumping into it all to have part of the "cash" cake that it will all generate. Finally, we've got to talk about two amazing (IMHO) companies: Google without which the web as we know it wouldn't be the web anymore and Apple. Google has come up in this year with so many products and innovations that I think no search engine on the Planet (I unfortunately cannot say Universe because I strongly believe in Extraterrestrial Intelligences and they might have developed technology that we don't even come close to) has can compete with Google. Apart from that, Google has invested a lot of money in countries like China where it's having a ragine battle with Microsoft. Apple (*grinning*) has done what Google has done but on the hardware side. I mean let's face it, they surely have a very small percentage of the market but with all their products, including OS X and the future move to Intel based processors, death might be looming above the heads of many of its competitors.

- Now getting back on MY 2005 year, I think I've had the most fun ever. As a Programmer, I have truly grown up during the course of this year because I've learnt many things, I've applied those things and I have had the opportunity to be around some really smart people who helped me improve my thinking as well as problem solving processes and I can only be grateful for that. As a Person, things have been a bit tough here and there but mostly I've learnt from those experiences and hopefully will improve some of those aspects of my life I really need to work on. As a Social Person, I can't say I've changed much. I am still the person I was a few years ago, prefering to be by myself, and not much giving a damn about the opinion other people have of me and my lifestyle that practically revolves around computers and technology. I've been criticized a lot about that aspect of me but well like I said earlier, I don't really give a damn.

- 2006 in just a few hours: well 2006, although I am really stressed about it should be a good year, I'd even say a fabulous year. At the beginning of the year I should be making a new addition to my family of gadgets that "I really need" (*grinning*) and that would be a 20 or 23 inch Apple Cinema Display. The main reason why I need this is because in the past few years, programming as we knew it (just using an editor as simple as Notepad or VI) has come to a new age where we actually need to run IDEs with many palettes all over the screen and this is quite close to tools used by graphic designers. And because in 2006 through 2007 I will be doing a whole lots of hardcore programming requiring profilers, advanced debugging tools, components and database toolboxes, I really need more screen real estate and a higher resolution. The next thing am planning to do is to travel a little bit around Southern Africa and hopefully some parts of Asia. This is the part of me that can't stay at one place for too long that is asking me to go around and see what else is available and how much more fun life could be elsewhere.

- Finally, on the 3rd of January 2006, my blog would be a whole great ONE YEAR old!! Yeeeeeaah! I just read my posts of January 2005 and comparing it to now, I couldn't believe how much has ACTUALLY changed during the 2005 year. It is totally unbelievable and I think this is the importance of personal journals of any form: they help one keep track of time and the changes it might or might now have brought along.


And now that I am done with my small 2005 review, I wish you all Great and Blissful 2006 Year.

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JPGeek, for my last post for the year 2005.